A DISCOURSE 



DKLIVEREI) IN THK 



FIRST CHURCH OF DOVER, MAY 18, 1873. 



Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 

SETTLEMENT OF DOVER, N. TL, 
By GEORGE B. SPALDING, 

PASTOR OF THF: FIRST CHURCH. 

il',il:lisl,.'d hii Request.-] 



DOVER, .V. H. : 

FREEWILL BAPTIST PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT 
1873. 



/ 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST CHURCH OF DOVER, MAY 18, 1873, 



Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 



SETTLEMENT OF DOVER, N. H,, 



/ 



By GEORGE B. SPALDING, 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH, 
[Published by Request."] 




DOVER, N. H. : 

FREEWILL BAPTIST PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 

1873- 



J3 



.::x 



DISCOURSE. 



The glory of children is their fathers. Proverbs 17: 6. 

/ i 

We live in a country whose national history has not yet 
reached its first centennial. Our oldest institutions are 
almost of yesterday. Our most ancient structures are free 
from the moss and stains of age. Our ideas, and associa- 
tions, and even our memories are within the boundaries of 
the near and present. It is, therefore, difficult for us to 
connect ourselves with an event which antedates by centu- 
ries the lives of most of us, an event which is farther re- 
moved from the birthday of the nation than that day is 
removed from the present. 

Two Hundred and Fifty years ago ! Then James the 
First was on the throne of England, nearing the end of his 
vices and stupidities. Shakespeare was but just resting in 
his tomb from his immortal labors. Galileo was o:ettino|; 
ready his heretical solar system to lay at the feet of the newly 
elected Pope. Bacon still lived, and wrote with all his 
wonted profundity of thought and splendor of eloquence. 
Milton, that year, a youth of marvelous beauty, entered 
1* 



the University at Cambridge. " Rare Ben Johnson " was 
busy with his court masques and comedies. ' Sidney was a 
boy playing at his mother's feet. 

Here, this side the great water, a feeble colony of En- 
glishmen was holding its position on the Virginian coast at 
a vast expenditure of money and a great sacrifice of human 
life. That very year they were fighting the Indians through 
tangled woods and swamps. That very year a feebler colony 
of Englishmen was passing a third year on the Massachu- 
setts coast, living on five kernels of corn to the individual.* 
In May of that year, two hundred and fifty years ago this 
Sabbath, one hundred persons, weak with sickness and 
starvation, laid down at night "not knowing," according to 
their own record, " where to have a Bit in the Morning, 
having neither Bread nor Corn ; yet," adds the writer, " we 
bear our Wants with Cheerfulness, and rest on Providence. "f 

In the same year and month of May, a boat from an English 
ship came up the river Piscataqua. It bore a little com- 
pany of men, none of whom are known to us by name, ex- 
cept two brothers, Edward and William Hilton. J They 
steered straight on up the broad stream until they came to 
a point of land made by the flowing in of another river. 

It was not the first time that these waters had been stirred 
by a foreign keel, and, perhaps, it was not the first time 
that this point of land had been trodden by foreign feet. 
Twenty years before this, Captain Martin Pring had sailed 
up this chann^el " 3 or 4 leagues," — perhaps ten miles, — 
and had explored its banks for sassafras, which was held in 
high estimation in Europe for its aromatic and medicinal 



♦Bancroft's Hist, of U. S. Little, Brown & Co. Vol, 1, p. 315. 
tPrince's Annals of N. E., first edition, vol. 1, p. 135. 
JPrince's Annals, vol. 1, p. 134. 



qualifies. Nine years before, the renowned Capt. John 
Smith had sailed along its wooded banks, and, on his return, 
had written in admiration of "the deep waters of Piscata- 
qua."* 

But the keel which now grated along the shore until it 
rested in some nook of the land turned not back. The two 
brothers, with their few associates, were soon "lifting up axes 
upon the thick trees." They threw up a rude house or two. 
Into them they gathered the articles and instruments, which 
they had brought with them, necessary for a fishery. They 
came to stay. And so Dover was born and cradled, and 
put to rest for at least eight years. At the end of that time, 
it could boast the possession of only three houses. 

Let us recall the features of the scene which these found- 
ers gazed upon. The same sky of blue and cloud ; the 
same unrivalled water view, of rivers with their shining 
arms, and great placid bays, all pulsing with the ocean's 
life ; the same rounded mountain and swelling hills ; all this, 
which fills us at each new beholding with increased admira- 
tion, met their eyes also. But the scene to them was wilder, 
fidler and richer. The "Neck," now so bare, was clothed 
from summit down to the water's edge with lordly pines and 
oaks, whose dense foliage swayed to and fro in the wind and 
sighed responsive to the ocean's roar. Innumerable trailing 
vines, many of them flaunting in gayest colors, interlaced 
the trees and rendered passage difficult. The deer had their 
well worn paths to the springs and grasses of the lower 
land. The rivers were filled with fish, and with all kind of 
water fowls. It was a scene which, to those men accus- 
tomed to the open, cultivated fields of England, must have 



♦Bancroft's Hist, of U. S., vol. 1, p. 114. Ibid, p. 328. 



6 



been almost terrible in its beauty. Probably, at that time, 
there were only a few Indians in the region. Years before 
it must have been a favorite place to them. Bat the entire 
eastern coast of New England, just before its settlement by 
white men, had been swept clean of its inhabitants by a 
great pestilence. The Pilgrims found in the neighborhood 
of Plymouth vast burial grounds, and bleaching bones scat- 
tered everywhere.* The Indians whom they saw were few 
in number, the fragments of once powerfid tribes. There 
was no savage whoop to smite with fear the Hiltons and 
their companions. They were startled by no other sound 
than the mighty crash of some monarch tree, which, at some 
moment of profound stillness, having reached the measure 
of its days, trembled and fell, ringing its own knell through 
all the solitude around. Unmolested and unobserved, the 
white invaders plied their occupations, curing fish and furs, 
and lumbering along the rivers' banks. The elder Hilton, 
Edward, is spoken of by Winthrop " as a gentleman of good 
judgment." Neither of them is supposed to have been a 
Puritan. They came here in the interests of Capt. John 
Mason, who had a claim to the region under a royal grant. 
Capt. Mason was a strong Churchman, and it may be pre- 
sumed that the Hiltons were like minded. The few acces- 
sions made during the first eight years were from a class of 
men with whom the Puritans had no sympathy either upon 
religion or moral grounds. In Prince's New England 
Chronology, I find this very significant entry, under date of 
Aug. 20th, 1630. Speaking of some who returned from the 
Plymouth Colony to England on account of sickness and 
threatened .famine, and " of dislike of our Government, 
which restrained and punished their Excesses," the annalist 



*Prince's Annals of N. E., vol. 1, p. 106. 



goes on to say that "others, also, afterwards hearing of 
Men of their own Disposition at Pascataway^ went from us 
to them : whereby, tho' our numbers were lessened, yet we 
accounted oui'selves nothing weakened by their Removal."* 
It is almost certain that Dover got some recruits from this 
company. 

In 1631, the ownership of the plantation passed to 
Lords Say and Brooks and others. Capt. Wiggin, who 
had been the agent of the old company and was con- 
tinued in the same office by the new one, went back to 
England to procure more ample means for carrying on the 
plantation. In the fall of 1633, the Captain returned, hav- 
ing with him a number of families from the west of England, 
some of whom, according to Hubbard, were " of good estate 
and of some account for religion." 

Among them was Rev. William Leveridge. He was a 
graduate of Emanuel College, Cambridge. According to 
Winthrop he was " a godly minister." Belknap writes of 
him as " a worthy and able Puritan minister." 

This first minister must have entered upon his work with 
great enthusiasm and energy. The settlers who came with 
him divided the lower part of the " Neck " into lots, with 
reference to building up " a compact town." It must have 
been under the inspiration of their minister that a meeting- 
house was first erected. It was placed upon the most ele- 
vated site, crowning the little settlement, and giving to it 
whatever grace and glory it might boast. It was a rude 
structure of logs and mud, but, like the temple of old, it 
was " beautiful for situation." 

The place where the first church was built should forever 
remain sacred to us, and to our children after us. When 



*Prmce's Annals of N. E., vol. 1, p. 246. 



8 

the magnificent temple was reared by Solomon, the glory of 
its marble walls, its golden pinnacles, and its precious wood 
could not eclipse the glory of the rude threshing floor of 
Araunah, where God appeared to David his father, and 
where his father first raised the altar of worship. That soul 
among us is wanting in some most precious quality that has 
no reverence for yonder spot where the fathers prayed and 
worshiped. I love to linger in thought around the place. 
I think of those hard, rough men and the scarcely gentler 
women, at the sound of the drum leaving their huts at the 
rivers' banks, mounting the hill, perhaps stopping at the way- 
side spring which still flows, entering in below the low 
porch, and gathering within the rude audience -room. There 
are some who love better the stately ritual of " the Church " 
service. There are others who care little for any service. 
There are a few who have felt the sting of Church bigotry 
and persecution in their English homes, and are ready, with 
large, grateful hearts, for the free and simple service to which 
their " Puritan minister " will lead them. I think of him, 
educated within the classic walls of the great EngHsh Uni- 
versity, a man of scholarly tastes and acquirements, who 
had already won honors in the land of Shakspeare and 
Bacon, in this log church in the wilderness, lifting his 
hands to prayer above those untaught men, and, out of the 
love for Christ which glowed within him, striving to shape 
their roughness into the grace of a Christian faith and Hv- 
ing. We catch his earnest, tender tones in prayer, his 
learned exposition and solemn appeal in sermon, and the 
strange song of their united praise. 

But the voice crying in the wilderness, like his of old, 
cried in vain. The minister lacked both the spiritual and 
material support of his people, and in less than two years 
withdrew to Boston, where he was admitted a member of 



9 

the first church. He died at Newton, L. I., after a life of 
patient, heroic service, leaving behind him a commentary on 
a large part of the Old Testament, a monument of his schol- 
arship and piety which is still preserved among the records 
of that ancient town.* 

After this, for two or more years, the people were with- 
out religious instruction. In the trade of fish, furs and 
lumber, and in the cultivation of corn, the plantation became 
somewhat flourishing. During all these early years, the set- 
tlers here were under the necessity of carrying their corn to* 
the windmill in Boston to be ground. 

In 1637, there cam.e up from Massachusetts a strange 
character, another one of those men who could not endure 
the rigor of the Puritan's manners and laws. George 
BuRDET, had been a colleague minister in the Established 
Church at Yarmouth, England. Somehow he had gotten 
into citizenship at Salem, Mass., and had even preached, 
there, but he thought that there would be ampler room for 
his free conscience and morals in the Dover plantation.f 
He found here two quite distinct elements, an Episcopal 
and a Puritan one.i 



*Thompson's Long IsL, vol. 1, p. 480. Kicker, Hist, of Newtown, L. I., 
53, 98. 

tWinthrop's N. E., vol. l,.p. 332, note. 

iThe early settlers of Dover and Portsmouth and of the Isles of Shoals were 
attached to the Church of England. They were thorough-going royalists. 
How bitterly they hated the Parliament against the king, and the Puritans 
of Massachusetts against the Church of England, how vast were the projects 
of some of their leaders, looking to the establishmentof Episcopacy and mon- 
archy in these northern regions, is seen in no little part of the annals and cor- 
respondence of those days. In a historical sketch of the Isles of Shoals, by 
John Scribner Jeuness, published by Hurd & Houghton, there is a very in- 
teresting and most significant reference to this matter. We refer the reader 
especially to chapters YI. and X. In Dover there were those whose sympa- 
thies were with the Bay Company and the independent ideas, both civil 
and religious, which the' Puritans represented. These, for the most part, 
were the men who came over with the " Puritan minister," Mr. Leveiidge. 
The fact that there existed here in Dover these two parties, representing 
principles and polities thus antagonistic, is the true key for our solution 
of the strange events which now open upon us. 



10 



He began at once to preach and also to intrigue. He 
aspired to be a sort of Pope, uniting in himself both the 
spiritual and temporal headships. And he succeeded. He 
set the people against Governor Wiggin and got himself 
elected to his office. He then put himself into correspond- 
ence with Archbishop Laud, the bitterest and meanest of all 
the Puritan's many foes. In his letters he tried to show 
that the men of Massachusetts were aiming* to establish an 
independent nationality.* What personal ambition underlay 
all this abominable hypocrisy and lying can only be guessed 
at. Perhaps he aimed at a bishopric here in North 
America ! But in this the prelatical pastor and politician 
failed. A letter of his to the English prelate was intercept- 
ed. His treachery was thus exposed. He withdrew into 
Maine. He afterwards went back to England, took sides 
with the royalists against the parliamentary forces, was taken 
prisoner, and this is the last known of him. 

Before Burdet left Dover, another even more conspicuous 
figure appeared on the stage, through whom this increasing 
difference between the Puritan and prelatical elements issued 
in a direct colhsion and so was hastened on to due settlement. 

There came to Boston, one Hansebd Knollys, a graduate 
of Cambridge, England. " He had received ordination 
from the Bishop of Peterborough, but was afterwards a 
zealous opposer of Episcopacy and the liturgy."t In July, 
1638, he arrived at Boston. He was without money. His 
own statement is, " I was necessitated to work daily with 
my hoe for the space of almost tlu'ee weeks." At the invita- 
tion of " some of the more religious " here, he came to Dover. 
Dr. Quint, writing upon this subject, thus concisely states 
the condition of affairs in Dover at the coming of Mr. 



*Winthrop's Hist, of N. E., vol. 1, pp. 358, 359. 
fNeal's Hist, of the Puritans, vol. 2, pp. 368, 369. 



11 



Knollys : "'^ He found a settlement originated under Epis- 
copal auspices, though enlarged under other influences ; a 
people mixed in their character, none of them emigrants for 
conscience' sake, and none of them Puritans of the Bay- 
type, the settlement a refuge for men who could not endure 
the IMassachusetts rigor ; no church organized after fifteen 
years of colonial life ; and a minister who, in spirit a church- 
man, was corresponding with Archbishop Laud, and who 
was supported by a portion of the people." 

"Of some of the best minded," says Winthrop, "he 
gathered a church." This refers to the organization of the 
church, of this church, in January, 1639, that is, 234 years 
ago !* 

And just here, because in these last days it has been 
claimed that this venerable church was organized by a Bap- 
tist minister as a Baptist church, or that it soon became a 
Baptist church under him, and because this claim has been 
given a sort of weight and respectability by being allowed a 
place in Dr. Sprague's distinguished work, " The Annals of 
the American Churches," it must have some notice. 

Therfe is no hint anywhere found that Knollys was a Bap- 
tist before his coming to America. Winthrop, who speaks 
with great particularity of him, and with an evident dislike 
of him which would have led him to charge Knollys 
with all that he was guilty of, if not something more, never 
speaks of him as being a Baptist. He charges him with 
holding " some of Mrs. Hutchinson's opinion," that is, with 
being an antinomian.f In all the controversy which raged 
so fiercely here in Dover, divided the people, tore the 



*Dr. Quint, in his Hist. Mem., No. 44: " It is evident that the church was 
organized within a few days, immediately following 13 January, 1638-9, O. 
S., or 24 January, 1639, as w^e should reckon it. The time can not be exactly 
ascertained. 

tWiuthrop's Hist. N. E., vol. 1, p. 351. 



12 



church, and involved in itself the lively interest and the 
special interference of the Massachusetts people, there is 
never a word in any record of it that affords a fact, or even 
a hint, out of wiiich this Baptist theorizer spins his dream. 

For a masterly refutation of this atsurd claim, I com- 
mend you to an article by a distinguished son of this 
church, who is greatly jealous of the mother's fame and 
honor.* 

The truth is, the conflict which was fought out within the 
walls of the old church and along the single street of Dover, 
was the same in character with that which had been raging 
for half a century in England, and whicli was yet to soak 
with the blood of its noblest citizens many of its fair fields. 

Hanserd Knollys was a Puritan. Hatred of the English 
established church had been generated in him by the perse- 
cutions which began to be brought against him from that 
quarter from the day when he renounced the ordination 
which he had received from its hands. Herbert Skeats, in 
his History, says that Knollys knew from experience, even 
at the first, all that Church persecution could tell. And 
when he fled from it, the High Commission Court, in Charles 
the First's time, followed him into New England. f He 
came to Dover, organized a church, and began preaching, 
surrounded by the same prelatical tendencies and influences 
the nature of which he knew well of in his English home. 
But those tendencies and influences were soon to gather head, 
and challenge from him, and others like him, stout and suc- 
cessful opposition. 

Thomas Larkham in this year, 1640, came to Dover. He 



*The Congregational Quarterly, January, 1871. Article entitled Hanserd 
Knollys in Sprague's Annals. By Eev. Alonzo H. Quint, D. D. 

tA Hist, of The Free Churches of England, Herbert S. Skeats, second 
edition, London : Arthur Miall, p. 155. 



13 



had been an Episcopal minister at Northam, England. That 
he still retained his church notions is evident from the fact, 
as recorded by Winthrop, on Larkham's arrival, "that he 
was a man not savouring the right way of church disci- 
pline," and again, from the fact as recorded by Hubbard, 
who calls him, in reference to Burdet, " another church- 
man." Mr. Larkham, finding the Massachusetts Puritanism 
uncongenial to him, came up to Dover, fie was a man of 
considerable wealth, and, buying some of the shares in the 
plantation company, he became greatly influential. , This is 
seen in the fact that he persuaded the people here to change 
the name of their town to Northam, this last being the name 
of his English home.* He was a man of brilliant speech 
and of popular address. The people began to want him as 
a preacher. Knollys was obliged to retire before him, and 
Mr. Larkham took the pulpit. Here he discovered his 
church notions at once and in a very marked way. Win- 
throp says ' ' he received into the church all that offered 
themselves, though men notoriously scandalous and igno- 
rant, so they would promise amendment." This usage was 
square against the Puritan idea. Its prevalence in the 
English church was one ground for our fathers' separation 
from it. They, as Furitans, aimed at a pure church. Here 
Knollys met him denouncing his practice. But Larkham 
went on carrying his prelatical notions still further.f+ In 
his baptism of children, he signed them with a cross, and 
regarded them as regenerated by the rite. This was a prac- 
tice and a notion which the Puritans had protested against 
from the first. He buried the dead according to the English 



♦Before this it was called Cochecho [Indian, Plungins: Water] or Hilton's 
Point. Note 1, p. 85, vol. 1. Provincial Papers, New Hampshire. 

tWinthrop's Hist, of N. E., vol. 2, p. 33. 

tLechford as quoted by Savage in note to "Winthrop's Hist., 2 vol., p. 32. 



14 

forms. The Puritans buried without even a prayer. 

Now came the conflict in this obscure church and town, 
the same which already was raging in Scotland, and which 
this very year, transferred beyond the Tweed, was destined 
to convulse England from end to end ; a conflict which here 
as well as there involved principles entering into the very 
nature and form of government, and which, as it might 
end, would give shape to the civil and political institutions 
and the character itself of the two people who, in the prov- 
idence of God, were called to rule, each its half of the 
world ! 

The Puritan Knollys and his adherents rose up and ex- 
communicated the Churchman Larkham and some of his 
followers. Larkham appealed to the magistrates, who sum- 
moned the Knollys party to appear and answer for their ac- 
tion. Capt. Underbill, who sided with the Puritans, mar- 
shalled them into military array. They marched up the 
street towards the court room, perhaps the meeting-house, 
the Puritan minister going in advance armed with a pistol, 
and bearing a Bible mounted on a halberd for an ensign.* 
Larkham and his party declined the challenge, but sent down 
the river to the 'Episcopal plantation at Portsmouth for aid. 
The field of contest was not within the province or jurisdic- 
tion of Portsmouth. But the Episcopal Governor came up at 
once in a boat, with an armed party, to the assistance of the 
imperiled churchmen. Knollys was besieged in his own 
house, till a court was summoned, when the Governor, sit- 
ting in judgment, found Underbill and his party guilty of 
riot, and, fining them, banished them from the plantation. 
Appeal was made by the Puritans to the Massachusetts col- 
ony. Simon Bradstreet, Esq., Timothy Dalton, of Hamp- 



*W'inthrop's Hist, of N. E., vol, 2, p. 33. 



15 

ton, and the famous Hugh Peters, then minister of Salem, 
were sent as commissioners by the Governor of Massachu- 
setts. They came on foot to Dover. Having thoroughly 
investigated the troubles here, and finding both parties more 
or less in fault, they terminated the affair by revoking the 
excommunication of Larkham and the fines and banishment 
of the other party.* 

I have thus carefully rehearsed this passage in the early 
history of Dover, not to stir a feeling of animosity against 
any church or party of to-day. These events and these 
men belong to the history of a past which we to-day are 
living over. No review would be at all complete and truth- 
ful, which overlooked this most significant affair. In itself 
this controversy held an important place in its time, engross- 
ing the attention and inflaming the passions of men beyond 
any other event that happened in that generation. But it 
has a place of greater meaning and importance than the im- 
mediate circumstances which surrounded it would seem to 
indicate. It was a quarrel between Churchmen and Puri- 
tans in respect not only to ecclesiastical power, but in re- 
spect to civil and political power also. It terminated not 
only in putting this ancient church forevermore under the 
name and the principles of Puritan Congregationalism, but 
it ended in putting the civil government of this Dover 
plantation, and perhaps eventually of New Hampshire itself, 
in harmony with the government and political principles of 
the other New England colonies. There were men here 
who hated Massachusetts. They sympathized with the 
Portsmouth plantation, whose people, Adams in his Annals 
of Portsmouth says, " were not puritanical, but retained 
their attachment to the Church of England." These men. 



*Belknap's Hist, of N. H., Farmer's edition, p. 26. 



16 

both, here and in Portsmouth, were in constant correspond- 
ence with men high in the church and royal interests in 
England, who purposed to crush the growing liberty and 
independence of the Puritan colonies. Had these men tri- 
umphed in this most critical time in the history of the church 
and plantation, there can be no doubt that the history of 
New Hampshire down to the war of the Revolution, and 
far beyond that event, would have been greatly different 
from -what it now is. The defeat of Larkham was speedily 
followed by a union of the New Hampshire plantations with 
the Massachusetts colony. Two years after, they entered 
into that first confederacy which included all the colonies 
of New England and which continued for nearly forty 
years. Of this union it has been finely said, "it was the 
prototype of the confederacy of the States during the revo- 
lution, which was, in fact, the germ and vivifying principle 
of our existence as a nation." 

Of Hanserd Knollys I must say a word. Both Larkham 
and Knollys were charged with gross immorality. Dr. 
Quint, who has thoroughly examined the matter, unhesi- 
tatingly pronounces the accusation against Knollys false, 
and is "inclined to doubt" that against Larkham. In re- 
spect to the former he says, " His whole life gives the lie to 
the charge which Winthrop had heard, and incautiously re- 
corded, of gross immorality in Dover. That Knollys com- 
menced a suit for slander, should have some bearing. That 
Hugh Peter should send a letter from Dover by Knollys, 
when the latter was on his way to Boston, earnestly recom- 
mending him, is a clear refutation. Nor could a wicked 
man in his latter days say, * My wilderness, sea, city and 
prison mercies, afford me many and strong consolations. 
The spiritual sights of the glory of God, the divine sweet- 
ness of the spiritual and providential presence of my Lord 



17 



Jesus Christ, and the comforts and joys of the Eternal 
Spirit, communicated to my soul, . . . have so often and so 
powerfully revived, refreshed and strengthened my heart in 
the days of my pilgrimage, trials and sufferings, that the 
sense, yea, the life and sweetness thereof, abides still upon 
my heart.' " In times when irreligious men and haters of 
ministers were compelled by law to pay for the minister's 
support, ministers were fair targets for slanderous and lying 
tongues, and a false rumor outtraveled the truth as fast 
then as it does in these days of daily papers and telegrams. 
Knollys went back to England. He became identified with 
the Baptists. For fifty years he bore his testimony to the 
truth which was in him. For almost fifty years he was sub- 
ject to a pitiless persecution. He gathered an immense con- 
gregation in London. He was a chaplain in Cromwell's 
army. He was known widely for his scholarship and his 
fervid piety.* But hatred and bigotry begirt him round as 
with fire. He was stoned out of a pulpit in Suffolk by the 
Presbyterians. He was imprisoned again and again by the 
royalists. He wandered a fugitive on the continent ; but 
he was faithful until death. When he was ninety-one years 
old the Toleration Act was passed, and for two years he knew 
for the first time the blessing of religious liberty. He then 
passed from eartli " in a transport of joy." His body lies 
buried in Bunhill Fields, where lie so many of England's 
sainted heroes. God grant us to be as pure in life, as brave 
in speech, as patient in suffering, as joyful in death and as 



*Hist. of 4he Free Churches of England, Herbert S. Skeats, p. 155. 

Hist, of the Puritans, Neal, vol. 2, pp. 368, 370. 

Skeats says, " He was, perhaps, the most active preacher in the denomi- 
nation — preaching for forty years, in prison and out of it, seldom less than 
three or four times a week. His scholarship adorned all his sermons and 
all his writiugs." 



18 

sure of heaven as was the first minister of this venerable 
church ! 

Dover, having placed herself under the jurisdiction of 
Massachusetts, appealed to the courts there for a minister. 
In answer to this request David Maud was sent here in 
1642. He was a graduate of Emanuel College, Cambridge. 
According to Hubbard the historian, Mr. Maud was "•' a 
learned man and of serious spidt and of a quiet, peaceable 
disposition." Under his ministry, continued until his death 
took place in 1855, the church was prospered. During his 
time a new Meeting-house was built by Major Waldron 
on the site of the old one. This building is thus described 
in the writing of the day, as " forty foot longe, twenty-six 
foote wide, sixteen foot studd, with six windows, two doores 
fitt for such a house, with a tile covering, and all the walls 
planck." The support of the minister was met by an an* 
nual payment of fifty pounds in money and the use of a 
house and land. 

John Reyner succeeded Mr. Maud in the ministry. 
He came to Dover in 1655 from Plymouth, where he 
had been settled eighteen years. The next year a 
Meeting-house was erected at Oyster river for the ac- 
commodation of the people living in Durham. The 
agreement between the two parishes was that £100 
should be raised for two ministers who might " exchange as 
often as they should agree." Probably these two ministers 
were represented in the sole person of Mr. Reyner until in 
166T he was assisted in his work by his son. The minis- 
ter's salary in 1658 was £120, a part of which was payable 
in provisions rated as follows : beef 3 1-2 d. per pound, 
pork 4 1-2 d., wheat 6 s. per bushel, malt 5 s., peas 5 s. 
In 1659 a house was given to Mr. Reyner and his heirs. 
In 1669, perhaps to meet the wants of this younger minis- 



19 

ter, it was voted at a " Publick Town meeting that there 
shall be a minister's house built upon clover neck the di- 
mentions is as folio we th that is to say 44 f. in length 20 
foot wide 14 foot between joist and joist with a stak of 
Brick chimneys and a sellar of 16 foot squaer, this house to 
be Builded at the charge of the hole town' in general."* 
During the ministry of the elder Reyner the drum used for 
summoning the people to meeting was displaced by a bell 
which was imported by Major Waldron. 

This plantation of Dover was held by grant by Capt. 
Mason. At the time when he made the purchase from the 
council of Plymouth his idea was to become a proprietor of 
a vast manor which should yield to him, through rentals 
and taxes, a revenue fit for royalty. It was a dream of 
wildest ambition. It was impossible of accomplishment. 
But the effort to make good this royal prerogative, persisted 
in throug^h the life of Mason and continued throusfh more 
than a century after by others who inherited or purchased 
these claims, was a source of immense litigation and trouble 
to the settlers of Dover. They claimed the land by pur- 
chase from the original owners, the Indians. They would 
not recognize the agents of the foreign proprietors. They 
would not be taxed. They would cut trees, no matter how 
many arrow heads, the sign of the foreign claimants, were 
put upon them. They had what they called " swamp 
laws," which were much more liberal in their provisions 
than were those of the proprietors' enacting. 

The leading spirit in the long and relentless resistance to 
these English claimants was Richard Waldron. He was 
a man of indomitable courage, vast tact, and unconquerable 
will, he was more than a match for the score of agents and 



*Dover Town Records. 

2* 



20 

governors sent over to enforce the rights of English owners. 
It was sometimes possible to obtain in the courts judgments 
against the titles of occupants, but it was exceedingly dan- 
gerous to levy an execution. An officer of deputy-governor 
Barefoote, in attempting to carry out a judgment of the court, 
was forcibly resisted and obliged to relinquish his purpose. 
Warrants were then issued against these rioters, and the 
sheriff with his attendants attempted to seize them whilst 
they were attending service in the old Meeting-house - 
Immediately there was a great uproar in the congregation. 
The sermon was stopped. A young heroine, whose name, 
unfortunately for her descendants, is not mentioned, seized 
a Bible and hurling it at the head of one of the officers, 
brought him to the floor. They were all so roughly handled, 
says the historian, "that they were glad to escape with their 
lives."* As late as 1746 these rights, which were originally 
conferred upon Mason in 1623, were sold to twelve citizens 
of this State, and, under their titles, not a little land in this 
part of New Hampshii*e is held to-day. f 

As early as 1662 the Quakers made their appearance in 
Dover. The Puritan had brought his hatred of these men 
with him from England. There, notwithstanding the purity 
of their lives and the truth of their principles, they had 
given some grounds for the hostility with which they were 
regarded by both Churchman and Puritan. Skeats, in his 
admirable history, says of the Quakers, after eulogizing their 
purity, enthusiasm and piety, " had they abstained from at- 
tacking other sects they would probably, in the time of the 
Commonwealth, not have been attacked ; but when they at- 



*Belknap's Hist., p. 114. 

tDr. Quint's article in the Congregational Quarterly, January, 18T1, on 
Hanserd Knollys. 



21 



tended places of worship and publicly assailed both the 
preachers and their doctrines, they excited an animosity 
which fell little short of fury." The New England Puri- 
tans regarded the Quakers as constituting a most dangerous 
element among them, and in the spirit of the age they per- 
secuted them with relentless cruelty. 'I'he arrival of these 
men at Dover caused a great excitement. The inhabitants 
petitioned for "reliefe against the spreading of their wicked 
jrrors" and "ordered that Capt. Richard Waldron shall 
and here be impowered to act in the execution of the lawes 
of this jurisdiction against all criminall offendors."* In 
answer to this, Capt. Waldron issued his warrant, and three, 
at least, of these inoffensive people were whipped out of 
town. The same results followed this insane persecution 
which had already followed a like persecution in England. 
The English historian writes, " The Quakers were whipped 
and imprisoned, put in stocks, pilloried, and made subject 
to every personal indignity, but they still increased in num- 
bers with an unexampled rapidity." So here in Dover, 
"where only, within this Province, the Quakers were perse- 
cuted, that sect has flourished perhaps to a greater extent 
than in any other town in New Hampshire. "f The Quak- 
ers were able to build a Meeting-house at Dover Neck in 
1700, and to-day they hold a respectable position in the 
community. 

In visiting the site of the old Meeting-house one must 
needs "mark well her bulwarks." The remains of her an- 
cient fortifications are still visible. As early as 1667 the 
Meeting-house was surrounded mth a fortification made of 
logs built upon an earthern entrenchment. It was a hun- 



*Provincial Papers New Hampshire, vol. 1, p. 243. 
tColl. N. H. Hist. Soc., vol. 2, p. 45. 



22 



clred feet square, and, at two diagonal corners there were 
projections, circular in form, which probably were sur- 
mounted with towers. Having recently gone over this 
entire region for personal observation, and having gleaned 
from the oldest inhabitants all the traditional knowledsre 

o 

which they possessed of the matter, I have formed an 
idea of the situation of the early settlement which I venture 
to lay before you. The houses of the early inhabitants were 
built down on the lower lands which meet the two rivers. 
Remains of what seem to be cellars are still visible. The 
Meeting-house was purposely built on the high ground, not 
only for the sentiment of the thing, but more particularly as 
affording an outlook over the houses below and the entire 
region around. The vast advantage which such an elevated 
site would afford is at once apparent in view of the dreadful 
circumstances which necessitated this fortification of the 
place. Standing in the angle-towers of the entrenchment 
a sentinel in the northwest corner could sweep with his eye 
the houses on his side, now deserted by those who wor- 
shiped within the entrenched church, a large part of the 
Bellamy river and valley below, and the great bays beyond ; 
and a sentinel pacing to and fro in the southeastern corner 
could hold under his eye the houses on the Cocheco bank, 
a great length of the river itself and the Maine shore and 
region beyond. It would hardly be possible for the Indian, 
however stealthy his movements, to shoot his canoe along 
the river and fall upon the unprotected houses without call- 
ing to himself the attention of the watchful guard and evok- 
ing from him an outcry upon the congregation within. This 
entrenchment was built because of a new and most threat- 
ening danger. The settlers on Sunday mornings, when the 
bell began to ring, took down their guns, which hung on 
their household walls, and, putting themselves at the head 



2S 

of their respective families, marched towards the Meeting- 
house on the hill. Arrived there, the guns were stacked in 
the rough entry. The sentinels were stationed on the outer 
walls. Worship began. The hymn, the prayer, the ser- 
mon was often broken in upon by the startling cry of the 
faithful watchmen. The guns were seized, and the men 
went forth to fight,, and sometimes to die. There is an ac- 
count here and there given of one and more shot down by 
the Indians, as they were going to or from the old Meeting- 
house. 

I am not going to recount the horrors and atrocities of 
the four great Indian wars which well nigh depopulated 
Dover. Hundreds of brave men were killed. Women and 
children were driven off in herds to Canada. The laborer 
in the field was surprised and scalped. The wife, busy 
about her domestic affairs, and the child sweetly dreaming 
in its cradle, were seized. A thousand nameless horrors, 
whose recital would chill your blood, were here performed, 
making those who lived to envy the cruel lot of those who 
had died. In 1677 a peace between the Indians and the 
white men was declared. Twelve years of blessed quiet 
ensued. Meanwhile the inhabitants had moved more and 
more away from the original site. A mill and other build- 
ings had sprung up around the falls at Cocheco, which was 
about four miles inland. *The place is now the center of 
our present population and business. Near the banks of 
the river which now drives our greatest industry, there were 
built five garrison houses, the walls being of heaviest tim- 
ber and the inner doors and the palisade-gates strongly 
bolted and barred. Into these fortified places, at sunset- 
hour, the neighboring families were gathered, and the watch 
was placed. Some years had elapsed since the last attack 
of the Indians upon the little settlement. The inhabitants 



24: 



were often meeting them with an unsuspecting confidence. 
The Indians were daily seen in their streets. . They traded 
at their doors, and sometimes they lodged in their very 
houses. But time was only intensifying the Indians' hatred 
of Major Waldron. His act of treachery committed thir- 
teen years before, by which four hundred of their number 
had been seized in a time of peace and sold into slavery, 
had not faded from their memory. They were familiarizing 
the white man with their presence in his streets and homes, 
and putting to rest his last suspicion, in order that the re- 
venge which they were ever meditating might at last meet 
its full measure of blood. 

One evening, in June of 1689, as the inhabitants were 
gathering into their garrisons, two squaws applied at each 
for a night's lodging. They were admitted. At midnight 
hour they opened the doors to the lurking savages without. 
The garrison of Major "Waldron was the first thus surprised. 
The old hero of eighty years was roused from his deep 
sleep by the yell of the Indians who thronged his chamber. 
He sprang up, grasped his sword, and lay round about him 
with desperation and great effect. But a blow from behind 
sent him senseless to the floor. The savages seized him, 
drew him out into the hall, and, binding him fast in a chair, 
danced around him, and mockingly saluted him as judge. 
Then each cut his breast across with a knife, shouting out, 
'^I cross out my account."* 

So died 'a man who was a ruler among the men of his 
day, of strong, clear mind, flashing wit, fearless spirit, and 
giant strength; a man to whose bold enterprise, broad un- 
derstanding, and tireless energy, Dover owes a vast debt of 
gratitude and praise. 



*Belknap's Hist., pp. 126, 127. 



25 



In this attack twenty-three of the inhabitants were killed 
and twenty-nine were driven away as captives. The mills 
and most of the houses were burned. 

For the next ten years, Dover was subject to an almost 
constant assault by the Indians. At other times, the great 
cold and the deep snow of winter had secured the distressed 
inhabitants a respite from their sufferings. But now that 
the Indians' revenge was seconded by popish enthusiasm, 
no winter could protect these frontier settlements from the 
remorseless foe. The terror and anguish of those years, 
when the very door-stones were stained with children's 
blood, when households were broken up, half their mem- 
bers, as captives, dragging their bleeding feet to Canada, 
and half lying in the peace of death, in the fields among 
the corn rows, or by the waters of the spring, where their 
wily enemy had waited patiently for their coming — the ter- 
ror and suffering of those times, we, who lie down at night 
in an unbroken security, and go and come without a thought 
of fear, can in no way imagine. 

The history of Dover and the history of the First Church, 
for a period in their existence, which covers nearly one 
hundred and forty years, are interwoven with each other. 
Indeed, they form an almost single and inseparable thread 
in the narrative. In the Massachusetts and Connecticut 
colonies, the State existed for the Church. If this can not 
be said of our Dover Plantation, it must be said that Church 
and State stood together in closest, and, for nearly a century 
and a half, in indissoluble union. At one time the minister 
of the church was governor of the plantation. The town 
records and the church records were one. The minister's 
salary and all church expenses, the building of jNIeeting- 
houses and parsonages were matters which were discussed 



26 



and voted upon in " publique Towne Meetinge " as mucli as 
were matters which pertain to the boundaries of neighbor- 
ing towns, or to the rights and privileges belonging to the 
"Bever traid." It was not until 1762, during the ministry 
of Jonathan Gushing, the great grandfather of Peter Gush- 
ing, the present oldest deacon of the church, that the parish 
was incorporated distinct from the town. It is proper, then, 
that, before closing, I should gather up certain facts which 
otherwise might seem to belong exclusively to the history 
of this ancient church. 

The massacre of Major Waldron and his associates by 
the Indians took place during the ministry of John Pike, 
who was the successor of the younger Reyner. The de- 
struction of the mills and of the best houses at Gocheco 
checked for a time the current which was drawing to it the 
business and the population of the Neck. With the excep- 
tion of the branch Meeting-house which had been built at 
Oyster River (Durham), the old church on the Neck was 
the only one in all the great territory which now includes 
Dover, Durham, Newington, Barrington and Somersworth. 
"Up to 1713, or thereabouts, the inhabitants of Somers- 
worth were obliged to travel from five to eight miles to the 
church on Dover Neck."* The records of the times show 
that there were many and bitter controversies between the 
people who lived on the Neck and those living in the contig- 
uous neighborhoods, touching this matter of church privileges 
and accommodations. During the ministry of Nicholas 
Sever, who succeeded Mr. Pike, the population had so in- 
creased at the Cocheco Falls that a fresh difficulty broke 
out about a site for a new church. For the accommodation of 



*New Hampshire Churches, p. 345. Somersworth. 



27 



people living here and at Madbury, Eollinsford and Som- 
ersworth, the town voted in 1714 to erect a Meeting- 
house on Pine Hill. The city of the dead, which now cov- 
ers so great a surface of the hill, was once the little church- 
yard, where a few graves lay in the shadow of the old 
church walls. Services were still continued in the building 
■on the Neck, but in 1720 it was abandoned. Its site was 
afterward occupied by a school-house. In 1758, during 
the ministry of Jonathan Gushing, the tenth minister, the 
fourth fleeting-house was erected. It held the site of this 
present one. This edifice, in which we are gathered to-day, 
is the fifth. It was completed and dedicated Dec. 30, 1829. 

From this mother church have sprung the church at 
Nemngton, organized in 1715, the church at Durham in 
1718, the church at Somersworth in 1730, now represented 
in the churches at Great Falls and Salmon Falls, the church 
at Barrington in 1755, and the Belknap chiuxh in this city, 
which was organized in 1856. 

For two hundred years this chuixh held within itself the 
entire ecclesiastical element of Dover. In 1824, the Meth- 
odist Episcopal church in Dover was formed. In 1825, the 
Universalist society in Dover and Somersworth was organ-, 
ized, and reorganized at Dover alone in 1837. In 1826, 
the first Freewill Baptist church was gathered. In 1827, 
the first Unitarian society was formed. In 1828, the Frank- 
lin Street Baptist church was organized. The Roman Cath- 
oHcs built their first church here in 1830. In 1839, St. 
Thomas church was organized. In 1840, the Washington 
Street Freewill Baptist church was formed. 

With these few fii-st chapters of the history of Dover, I 
must close the volume. To one of her own sons, who loves 
the very stones of her streets, and who knows her full his- 



28 



tory as well as any story of childhood, I leave the task of 
the completed narrative.* 

And yet I may, in closing, call your thoughts away from 
these early days of the fathers' struggles and sufTeriugs to 
days when their children and their children's children even 
to our own time renewed the old experience of tear^ and 
anguish. The heroic qualities which we have admired in 
those forefathers shone in undimmed luster in their sons 
who under the leadership of another Waldron, met a no^ 
less deadly foe on the battle-field of my own dearly loved 
State,t of New York, of Rhode Island, wherever northern 
men were marching and fighting through the y^ars of the 
great Revolution. And those qualities of patriotism, loy- 
alty hatred of oppression, and brave fidelity which shrinks 
not Ironi death, were transmitted in their unsullied bri^ht- 
nessto fathers and sons of our days. The boys of Do^er 
fell into the old line of duty where their fathers stood, and 
marched and fought with the old, unflinching heroism 
.through the swamps and wildernesses where treason was 
crouching to throttle the nation. Many of them lie in un- 
known graves, beneath the sod which they crimsoned with 
their blood. Many of them lie on yonder hillside, amidst 
the scenes of the tathers' sufferings and trials. And we re- 
main to hold them all, the fathers and the sons together, in 
one close, tender embrace of love; to celebrate their com- 
mon virtues and dedicate ourselves with a more solemn pur- 
pose to all that was grand and true in their lives and char- 



^Zl°ttn'^^^iS^{t^l^:^^^^f,^^^^ Of Dover, March 2, 1871, Dr. A. 



^9 



The same current of time which has swept through these 
centuries of Dover's history, bearing on its bosom so many 
generations of men, is under us, sweeping us onward. 
There are duties for us to do. There are sacrifices for us 
to make. There is a nobleness of character and action for 
us to reach. Farther down this stream of time, there will 
be another gathering. The youngest living and those now 
unborn will meet to celebrate another stadium in Dover's 
history. We shall have been gathered to the fathers ! 
What shall we have done to make that day more grateful 
to them ? What virtues shall we have achieved, what work 
of beneficence or enterprise shall we have wrought out 
which shall call for richer garlands and wreaths and gladder 
songs and worthier speech than ours to-day ? Blessed shall 
we be if those who are gathered then can say of us, as we 
to-day say in grateful memory of those who are gone, " the 



\^i5\ 0- ^^'^ 



